A honey shower rains from her lips,
Sweet lights shine in her face;
She hath the blush of virgin mind,
The mind of viper's race.

She makes thee seek, yet fear to find;
To find, but nought enjoy;
In many frowns, some passing smiles
She yields to more annoy.

She letteth fall some luring baits,
For fools to gather up;

Now sweet, now sour, for every taste
She tempereth her cup.

Her watery eyes have burning force,
Her floods and flames conspire;
Tears kindle sparks-sobs fuel are,
And sighs but fan the fire.

May never was the month of love,
For May is full of flowers;
But rather April, wet by kind,
For love is full of showers.

With soothing words enthralled souls
She chains in servile bands;
Her eye, in silence, hath a speech
Which eye best understands.
Her little sweet hath many sours;
Short hap immortal harms;
Her loving looks are murdering darts,
Her songs, bewitching charms.
Like winter rose and summer ice,
Her joys are still untimely;
Before her hope, behind remorse,
Fair first-in fine unkindly.

Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,
Leave off your idle pain;

Seek other mistress for your mindsLove's service is in vain.

Scorn not the Least.

Where words are weak, and foes encount'ring strong, Where mightier do assault than do defend,

The feebler part puts up enforced wrong,

And silent sees, that speech could not amend: Yet higher powers must think, though they repine, When sun is set the little stars will shine.

While pike doth range, the silly tench doth fly,
And crouch in privy creeks with smaller fish;
Yet pikes are caught when little fish go by,
These fleet afloat, while those do fill the dish;
There is a time even for the worms to creep,
And suck the dew while all their foes do sleep.

The merlin cannot ever soar on high,

Nor greedy greyhound still pursue the chase; The tender lark will find a time to fly,

And fearful hare to run a quiet race.
He that high growth on cedars did bestow,
Gave also lowly mushrooms leave to grow.

In Haman's pomp poor Mardocheus wept,
Yet God did turn his fate upon his foe.
The Lazar pin'd, while Dives' feast was kept,
Yet he to heaven-to hell did Dives go.
We trample grass, and prize the flowers of May;
Yet grass is green, when flowers do fade away.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

SAMUEL DANIEL was the son of a music-master. He was born in 1562, near Taunton, in Somerset

shire, and seems to have been educated under the patronage of the Pembroke family. In 1579, he was entered a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he chiefly devoted himself to the study of poetry and history; at the end of three years, he quitted the university, without taking a degree, and was appointed tutor to Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. After the death of Spenser, Daniel became what Mr Campbell calls 'voluntary laureate' to the court, but he was soon superseded by Ben Jonson. In the reign of James (1603), he was appointed Master of the Queen's Revel's, and inspector of the plays to be represented by the juvenile performers. He was also preferred to be a Gentleman-Extraordinary and Groom of the Chamber to Queen Anne. Towards the close of his life, he retired to a farm at Beckington, in Somersetshire, where he died in October 1619.

The works of Daniel fill two considerable volumes; but most of them are extremely dull. Of this nature is, in particular, his History of the Civil War (between the houses of York and Lancaster), which occupied him for several years, but is not in the least superior to the most sober of prose narratives. His Complaint of Rosamond is, in like manner, rather a piece of versified history than a poem. His two tragedies, Cleopatra and Philotas, and two pastoral tragi-comedies, Hymen's Triumph and The Queen's Arcadia, are not less deficient in poetical effect. In all of these productions, the historical taste of the author seems to have altogether suppressed the poetical. It is only by virtue of his minor pieces and sonnets, that Daniel continues to maintain his place amongst the English poets. His Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland is a fine effusion of meditative thought.

[From the Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland.]

He that of such a height hath built his mind,
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!

And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood! where honour, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil;
Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet
As frailty doth; and only great doth seem
To little minds who do it so esteem.

He looks upon the mightiest monarch's wars,
But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-fac'd enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice he sees, as if reduced, still

Conspires with power, whose cause must not be ili.

*

*

He sees the face of right t' appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man;
Who puts it in all colours, all attires,
To serve his ends, and makes his courses hold.
He sees that, let deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint and mocks this smoke of wit.

*

7

[Richard II., the Morning before his Murder in
Pomfret Castle.]

Whether the soul receives intelligence,
By her near genius, of the body's end,
And so imparts a sadness to the sense,
Foregoing ruin whereto it doth tend;
Or whether nature else hath conference
With profound sleep, and so doth warning send,
By prophetising dreams, what hurt is near,
And gives the heavy careful heart to fear:

However, so it is, the now sad king,
Toss'd here and there his quiet to confound,
Feels a strange weight of sorrows gathering
Upon his trembling heart, and sees no ground;
Feels sudden terror bring cold shivering;
Lists not to eat, still muses, sleeps unsound;
His senses droop, his steady eyes unquick,
And much he ails, and yet he is not sick.

The morning of that day which was his last,
After a weary rest, rising to pain,
Out at a little grate his eyes he cast
Upon those bordering hills and open plain,
Where other's liberty make him complain
The more his own, and grieves his soul the more,
Conferring captive crowns with freedom poor.

O happy man, saith he, that lo I see,
Grazing his cattle in those pleasant fields,
If he but knew his good. How blessed he
That feels not what affliction greatness yields!
Other than what he is he would not be,
Nor change his state with him that sceptre wields.
Thine, thine is that true life: that is to live,
To rest secure, and not rise up to grieve.

Thou sitt'st at home safe by thy quiet fire,
And hear'st of other's harins, but fearest none:
And there chou tell'st of kings, and who aspire,
Who fal, who rise, who triumph, who do moan.
Perhaps thou talk'st of me, and dost enquire
Of my restraint, why here I live alone,
And pitiest this my miserable fall;

For pity must have part-envy not all.

Thrice happy you that look as from the shore,
And have no venture in the wreck you see;
No interest, no occasion to deplore

Other men's travels, while yourselves sit free.
How much doth your sweet rest make us the more
To see our misery and what we be:

Whose blinded greatness, ever in turmoil,
Still seeking happy life, makes life a toil.

[Early Love.]

:

Ah, I remember well (and how can I
But evermore remember well) when first
Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was
The flame we felt; when as we sat and sigh'd
And look'd upon each other, and conceiv'd
Not what we ail'd, yet something we did ail,
And yet were well, and yet we were not well,
And what was our disease we could not tell.
Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look and thus
In that first garden of our simpleness

We spent our childhood. But when years began
To reap the fruit of knowledge; ah, how then
Would she with sterner looks, with graver brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardness!
Yet still would give me flowers, still would show
What she would have me, yet not have me know.

[Selections from Daniel's Sonnets.]

I must not grieve, my love, whose eyes would read
Lines of delight, whereon her youth might smile;
Flowers have time before they come to seed,
And she is young, and now must sport the while.
And sport, sweet maid, in season of these years,
And learn to gather flowers before they wither;
And where the sweetest blossom first appears,
Let love and youth conduct thy pleasures thither,
Lighten forth smiles to clear the clouded air,
And calm the tempest which my sighs do raise:
Pity and smiles do best become the fair;
Pity and smiles must only yield thee praise.
Make me to say, when all my griefs are gone,
Happy the heart that sigh'd for such a one.

Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair;
Her brow shades frown, altho' her eyes are sunny;
Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair;
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey.
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love;
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her:
Sacred on earth; design'd a saint above;
Chastity and Beauty, which are deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she Pity to conjoin with those,
Then who had heard the plaints I utter now?
For had she not been fair, and thus unkind,
My muse had slept, and none had known my mind.

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my anguish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my care, return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-advised youth;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torments of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires,
To model forth the passions of to-morrow;
Never let the rising sun prove you liars,
To add more grief, to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

MICHAEL DRAYTON.

MICHAEL DRAYTON, born, it is supposed, at Atherston, in Warwickshire, about the year 1563, and the son of a butcher, discovered in his earliest years such proofs of a superior mind, that, at the age of ten, he was made page to a person of quality-a situation which was not in that age thought too humble for the sons of gentlemen. He is said, upon dubious authority, to have been for some time a student at Oxford. It is certain that, in early life, he was highly esteemed and strongly patronised by several persons of consequence; particularly by Sir Henry Goodere, Sir Walter Aston, and the Countess of Bedford: to the first he was indebted for great part of his education, and for recommending him to the countess; the second supported him for several years. In 1593, Drayton published a collection of his pastorals, and soon after gave to the world his more elaborate poems of The Baron's Wars and England's Heroical Epistles. In these latter productions, as in the History of the Civil War by Daniel, we see symptoms of that taste for poetised history (as it may be called) which marked the age -which is first seen in Sackville's design of the Mirrour for Magistrates, and was now developing itself strongly in the historical plays of Shakspeare, Shak Marlow and others. On the accession of James L in 1603, Drayton acted as an esquire to his patron, Sir Walter Aston, in the ceremony of his installation as a Knight of the Bath. The poet expected some patronage from the new sovereign, but was disappointed. He published the first part of his most elaborate work, the Polyolbion, in 1612, and the second in 1622, the whole forming a poetical description of England, in thirty songs, or books.

Michael Drayton.

The Polyolbion is a work entirely unlike any otner in English poetry, both in its subject and the manner in which it is written. It is full of topographical and antiquarian details, with innumerable allusions to remarkable events and persons, as conaected with various localities; yet such is the poetical genius of the author, so happily does he idealise almost everything he touches on, and so lively is the flow of his verse, that we do not readily tire in perusing this vast mass of information. He seems to have followed the manner of Spenser in his unceasing personifications of natural objects, such as hills, rivers, and woods. The information contained in this work is in general so accurate, that it is quoted as an authority by Hearne and Wood.

In 1627, Drayton published a volume containing The Battle of Agincourt, The Court of Faerie, and other poems. Three years later appeared another volume, entitled The Muses' Elysium, from which it appears that he had found a final shelter in the family of the Earl of Dorset. On his death in 1631, he was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, containing an inscription in letters of gold, was raised to his memory by the wife of that nobleman, the justly celebrated Lady Anne Clifford, subsequently Countess of Pembroke and Mont

gomery.

Drayton, throughout the whole of his writings, voluminous as they are, shows the fancy and feeling of the true poet. According to Mr Headley- He possessed a very considerable fertility of mind, which enabled him to distinguish himself in almost every species of poetry, from a trifling sonnet to a long topographical poem. If he anywhere sinks below himself, it is in his attempts at satire. In a most pedantic era, he was unaffected, and seldom exhibits kis learning at the expense of his judgment.'

breast,

Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glitt'ring

east

That hath so many sorts descending from her kind.

The tydy for her notes as delicate as they,
The laughing hecco, then the counterfeiting jay.
The softer with the shrill (some hid among the leaves,
Some in the taller trees, some in the lower greaves)
Thus sing away the morn, until the mounting sun,
Through thick exhaled fogs his golden head hath run,
And through the twisted tops of our close covert
creeps

To kiss the gentle shade, this while that swectly sleeps.

And near to these our thicks, the wild and frightful herds,

Not hearing other noise but this of chattering birds, Feed fairly on the lawns; both sorts of seasoned deer : Here walk the stately red, the freckled fallow there : The bucks and lusty stags amongst the rascals strew'd As sometime gallant spirits amongst the multitude. Of all the beasts which we for our venerial name, The hart among the rest, the hunter's noblest game:

and near,

Brave huntress; but no beast shall prove thy quarries here;

Save those the best of chase, the tall and lusty red, The stag for goodly shape, and stateliness of head,

Is fitt'st to hunt at force. For whom, when with his hounds

The labouring hunter tufts the thick unbarbed grounds, Where harbour'd is the hart; there often from his feed The dogs of him do find; or thorough skilful heed, The huntsman by his slot, or breaking earth, perceives,

Or ent'ring of the thick by pressing of the greaves, Where he had gone to lodge. Now when the hart doth hear

The often-bellowing hounds to vent his secret lair,
He rousing rusheth out, and through the brakes doth

drive,

As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive. And through the cumb'rous thicks, as fearfully he

makes,

He with his branched head the tender saplings shakes, That sprinkling their moist pearl do seem for him to

Until the noble deer, through toil bereav'd of strength,
His long and sinewy legs then failing him at length,
The villages attempts, enraged, Lot giving way
To arything he meets now at his sad decay.

The cruel ravenous hounds and bloody hunters near,
This noblest beast of chase, that vainly doth but fear,
Some bank or quick-set finds; to which his haunch

opposed,

He turns upon his foes, that soon have him inclosed. The churlish-throated hounds then holding him at

bay,

And as their cruel fangs on his harsh skin they lay, With his sharp-pointed head he dealeth deadly

wounds.

The hunter, coming in to help his wearied hounds, He desperately assails; until opprest by force, He who the mourner is to his own dying corse, Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets falll To forests that belongs.

*

*

Her often varying form, as variously and changes; First Erwash, and then Lyne, sweet Sherwood sends her in;

Then looking wide, as one that newly wak'd had been, Saluted from the north, with Nottingham's proud

height,

So strongly is surpris'd, and taken with the sight,
That she from running wild, but hardly can refrain,
To view in how great state, as she along doth strain,
That brave exalted seat beholdeth her in pride,
As how the large-spread meads upon the other side,
All flourishing in flowers, and rich embroideries

dress'd,

In which she sees herself above her neighbours bless'd. As wrap'd with the delights, that her this prospect

brings,

In her peculiar praise, lo thus the river sings:

What should I care at all, from what my name I
take,

That thirty doth import, that thirty rivers make;
My greatness what it is, or thirty abbeys great,
That on my fruitful banks, times formerly did seat;
Or thirty kinds of fish that in my streams do live,
To me this name of Trent, did from that number give
What reck I? let great Thames, since by his fortune he
Is sovereign of us all that here in Britain be;
From Isis and old Tame his pedigree derive;
And for the second place, proud Severn that doth

strive,

Fetch her descent from Wales, from that proud moun tain sprung,

Plinillimon, whose praise is frequent them among,
As of that princely maid, whose name she boasts to

bear,

Bright Sabrin, whom she holds as her undoubted heir, Let these imperious floods draw down their long de

scent

From these so famous stocks, and only say of Trent,

1 The hart weepeth at his dying; his tears are held to be pre That Moreland's barren earth me first to light did bring,

Which though she be but brown, my clear complexion'd spring

Gain'd with the nymphs such grace, that when I first did rise,

The Naiads on my brim danc'd wanton hydagies, And on her spacious breast (with heaths that doth abound)

Encircled my fair fount with many a lusty round: And of the British floods, though but the third I be, Yet Thames and Severn both in this come short of me, For that I am the mere of England, that divides

The north part from the south, on my so either sides, That reckoning how these tracts in compass be extent, Men bound them on the north, or on the south of Trent;

Their banks are barren sands, if but compar'd with mine,

Through my perspicuous breast, the pearly pebbles shine:

I throw my crystal arms along the flow'ry valleys,
Which lying sleek and smooth as any garden alleys,
Do give me leave to play, whilst they do court my
stream,

And crown my winding banks with many an anadem;
My silver-scaled sculls about my streams do sweep,
Now in the shallow fords, now in the falling deep :
So that of every kind, the new spawn'd numerous fry
been in me as the sands that on my shore do lie.
The barbel, than which fish a braver doth not swim,
Nor greater for the ford within my spacious brim,
Nor(newly taken) more the curious taste doth please;
The grayling, whose great spawn is big as any pease;
The perch with pricking fins, against the pike pre-
par'd,

As nature had thereon bestow'd this stronger guard,
His daintiness to keep (each curious palate's proof)
From his vile ravenous foe: next him I name the
ruff,

His very near ally, and both for scale and fin,
In ta-te, and for his bait (indeed) his next of kin,
The pretty slender dare, of many call'd the dace,
Within my liquid glass, when Phœbus looks his face,
Oft swiftly as he swims, his silver belly shows,

But with such nimble flight, that ere ye can disclose
His shape, out of your sight like lightning he is shot;
The trout by nature mark'd with many a crimson spot,
As though she curious were in him above the rest,
And of fresh-water fish, did note him for the best;
The roach whose common kind to every flood doth fall;
The chab (whose neater name which some a chevin
call)

Food to the tyrant pike (most being in his power), Who for their numerous store he most doth them

devour;

The lusty salmon then, from Neptune's wat'ry realm, When as his season serves, stemming my tideful stream,

Then being in his kind, in me his pleasure takes,
(For whom the fisher then all other game forsakes)
Which bending of himself to th' fashion of a ring,
Above the forced wears, himself doth nimbly fling,
And often when the net hath drag'd him safe to land,
Is seen by natural force to 'scape his murderer's hand;
Whose grain doth rise in flakes, with fatness inter-
larded,

Of many a liquorish lip, that highly is regarded.
And Humber, to whose waste I pay my wat'ry store,
Me of her sturgeons sends, that I thereby the more
Should have my beauties grac'd with something from
him sent;

Not Ancum's silver'd eel excelleth that of Trent; Though the sweet smelling smelt be more in Thames than me,

The lamprey, and his lesse, in Severn general be;

For ought to her might chance, by others love or hate,

With resolution arm'd against the power of fate,
All self-praise set apart, determineth to sing
That lusty Robin Hood, who long time like a king
Within her compass lived, and when he list to range
For some rich booty set, or else his air to change,
To Sherwood still retired, his only standing court,
Whose praise the Forest thus doth pleasantly report:
'The merry pranks he pray'd, would ask an age to tell,
And the adventures strange that Robin Hood befel,
When Mansfield many a time for Robin hath been

laid,

How he hath cousen'd them, that him would have betray'd;

How often he hath come to Nottingham disguised,
And cunningly escaped, being set to be surprised.
In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one,
But he hath heard some talk of him and Little Joha;
And to the end of time, the tales shall ne'er be done,
Of Scarlock, George-a-Green, and Much the miller's son,
Of Tuck the merry friar, which many a sermon made
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade.
An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood,
Still ready at his call, that bowman were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green, with caps of red and blue,
His fellow's winded horn, not one of them but knew,